Anna Jiwon Park has been covering the politics at The Korea Times since the summer of 2024, when she joined the press pool for the Office of the President in Korea. Prior to that, she spent about five years reporting extensively on financial markets, regulatory authorities and the financial industry. She joined The Korea Times in 2019 after spending eight years as a broadcast journalist at Arirang TV, Korea’s leading global broadcaster, covering politics, defense and culture.
KakaoBank strengthens platform business as core growth strategy
KakaoBank CEO Yun Ho-young speaks during an online press conference on Tuesday. Courtesy of KakaoBank
By Anna J. Park
By Anna J. Park
KakaoBank, the country's number one mobile-based bank, has declared its growth strategy for 2022 will focus on strengthening its platform business which continues to serve as its core growth driver.
During an online press conference on Tuesday, CEO Yun Ho-young stressed the bank's platform business will continue to be at the center of its growth.
“KakaoBank's monthly active users (MAU) have reached 15.3 million people, which is the 14th highest figure among all mobile applications in the country. This huge growth in MAU has been a solid foundation for the bank's platform business and further growth based on that foundation will continue in 2022, serving as the core axis,” CEO Yun said during the press conference.
The CEO boasted that the number of the bank's customers stands at some 18 million users, an increase of over 2.6 million people last year alone. In particular, people in their 50s or higher have joined up, accounting for about 40 percent of the bank's new customers. Just like the growth pattern for mobile messaging service KakaoTalk, the initial users of the bank were those in their 20s and 30s, followed by 40s and now those who are in their 50s and over. The number of users in their teens is also fast increasing, thanks to its unique banking service for those over the age of 14.
Yun said the bank's profits from the platform business sector account for more than a quarter of its operational profit, explaining that the bank has been strengthening its partnership business in diverse sectors. Such partnership businesses range from securities brokerage services, loan connecting services, customer-tailored advertisements and a combination of banking and commerce companies, including E-mart, Kurly Corp. and Happy Point.
The CEO continued to say that the bank's top strategic priority has always been on increasing the banking app's MAU, which is hugely different from other local banks' more traditional management targets like the growth of a bank's assets and total loans value.
“Instead of setting general management goals like the bank's total credit sizes or profit growth, KakaoBank's top priority lies in how often customers actually use KakaoBank mobile apps, as the bank hopes to be the number one retail bank in the sense that it's most often used by customers,” the CEO explained.
In order to achieve the goal of becoming the number one retail bank in terms of customer usage, the CEO said that KakaoBank has been emphasizing innovation in mobile-based banking services for customers.
“First and foremost, KakaoBank is a technology-based bank, hoping to re-engineer financial banking services with firm roots in technology advancement,” CEO Yun said, adding that technology and innovation are the bank's key assets.
Under this vision, the bank launched a financial technology research institute, expanding research development on big data and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
The CEO also stressed the bank has to assume greater social responsibility after its IPO last year. KakaoBank raised capital totaling some 2.5 trillion won ($2 billion) through its IPO in August.
“With the IPO, KakaoBank's roles and responsibilities have grown greatly from July 2017, when the bank started to prepare for banking services. The bank plans not to fall into complacency and will seek new growth to bring the future of banking into the present,” CEO Yun said.
In line with this goal, the bank plans to provide mortgage loan services for its users from March. Due to their complicated nature, mortgage loans have mostly been processed via in-person services in most banks. Yet, the internet-only bank said it has revolutionized the process to be handled entirely on mobile services with innovative interface designs and chatbot functions. The mortgage loans, meanwhile, will only be available for apartment housing cases under the value of 900 million won for the time being.